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@david crawford - 05:05

It is troubling that you cannot see the ramifications of the government being able to read the correspondence of its citizens. If recent experience has taught us anything - the anti-terrorism laws for example - it is that governments over-reach and use such powers in unintended ways: for example, removing protesters from party conferences.

It is naive or disingenuous, or both, to suggest that there is a straight line between the government not being able to read emails and a tragedy like the London bus bombing. Please don't presume that I subscribe to this overly-simplistic view. I do not.

There are lots of things that have social utility but that can cause harm or injury to individuals in that society: motor vehicles, for example. The right to privacy is one of those things. Just because you cannot conceive how its loss might impact a free society, it doesn't mean that we should allow for our government to deprive us of it.